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Amarok 2.9 Beta Release

August 16, 2015 - 08:20 — The Amarok Team

The Amarok team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the result of 2 years of hard work, the beta release of Amarok 2.9. This release is marked by improvements, corrections and polishing of nearly all Amarok features. Everybody is encouraged to test this beta release thoroughly so that we can release rock-solid Amarok 2.9 final. While this version has been thoroughly tested on our systems, we welcome additional tests by our users, as we simply can't cover all possible use-cases.

We still have two blocker bugs, a major one which sends Amarok into a loop:

Comments

I was always using Amarok as my default music player (only on Linux system) and I'm missing one function. In previous version you had the possibillity to rate the song just by clicking on "stars column". In new version I have to go inside statistics of the song and then set amount of stars...

You can click on the stars in the "Now playing" Context applet, or change the playlist layout so the stars appear in the song. Please see the handbook about this: https://userbase.kde.org/Amarok/Manual/ConfiguringAmarok/ChangingLayout#Changing_the_Playlist_layout

You can still do this, you just need to modify your playlist to show the star column.
Playlist > Playlist Layouts > configure playlist layouts...
Then create your own playlist layout to include the star column. Enjoy. :)

Most of the plugins aren't working, will these be fixed for the new release? The availability of plugins and scripts is one of the main areas which sets a media player apart from it's competitors. Personally, i wouldn't even be using Amarok if it were not for the SHOUTcast script.

Please file bugs for those that do not work for you, and don't forget to specify your exact KDE release version: http://bugs.kde.org. As for the Shoutcast script: please report this to the script author, this is not made by us.

Coders,
I am thrilled that this project is still alive. With each new ubuntu update something else doesn't work and Amarok is such a great program, one of the greats of open-source.
Please enjoy this Douglas Adams quote as thanks:D
"My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees."

If I plug any of my mp3 players into any version of Linux they will mount on the desktop but will not be recognised by Amarok It's a shame really because if Amarok did mount my players I'd ditch Windows and use Mint or Elementary Linux

Really appreciate the work and the program which I really consider to be the best around, but immediate for Amarok is about as relative as things get. Anything more concrete as a date available? I seem to remember last year around xmas there was going to be a release soon also...

The project is bad managed: no single release for 3 years, blocker bugs aren't major (as if major user base use AudioCD, really? as if major user base use Wikipedia in Amarok, really?).
My recommendation is: If you haven't manpower to bring those additional features back then drop them and not let them halt development for ages.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Is amarok crashing cos of these two "major blocker bugs"? Are user files deleted/renamed/id3 tags erased because of these two bugs? Can't users manage their collection, add/remove files from collection, load/save playlists, skip/change songs because of it?
As for AudioCD. I would never use Amarok to play AudioCDs anyway. Why would you do that? Besides ... what percentage is actually regularly (on daily basis) listening AudioCDs? 50%? 25%? 10%? 1%? 0.1%?
If it is below 10% is not a major "blocker" bug.
Instead of these two bugs. Is fade in/out and crossfade finally working? Or you still blame phonon developers for your inability to fix something all modern music players have?
Cheers

Yes Amarok crashes due to the Audio CD bug (and as a result of the new collection rewrite, can corrupt your DB if it crashes during the update), the wikipedia bug isn't really a bug anymore, since Wikipedia has discontinued non SSL access anyway. i'm currently working on getting the Audio CD blockers fixed up, we'll see how it goes with getting those fixes integrated and maybe push a release

Cheers. I am pretty sure that can speak for everyone that we are really eager to get Amarok back on track in our favourite distros.
Amarok used to be my favourite player but crossfading was/is a major stopper for me. I am not far away from a "pure" Amarok though. Using 80% clementine, 15% mpd and 5% Amarok at the moment.
Keep all the good work and thanks!
Damijan

In my opinion this is a problem with the whole KDE crap. Features over features that WOULD be nice if they only where functioning. -
Kontact (silently) looses contact ( how ironic ) to CalDAV and CardDAV servers almost every day FOR YEARS making new entries worthless, as they cannot be synced. I now be happy with thunderbird. What a shame. -
In Amarok I just (again) lost all my statistics and ratings just because of a Kubuntu reinstall, despite of keeping all user data and the database. -
I could go on for hours ranting about non functional things in KDE that will never be fixed. Instead, if a version starts to become halfway usable it's trashed and a new version with a complete new infrastructure is set up (like plasma5 right now). Starting with version 4 KDE is descending continuously. -
If I wasn't too lazy I should look for a stable desktop.

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Guys, thanks for all the labor you put in this wonderful music application through the years, İt has been really great pleasure to listen music in Amorok. But for the last three years there hasn't been much progress on the development side.
I think Amorok should catch up with the latest features such as hidpi support and a good plugin for Spotify and a sync service for track statistics. As Amarok users we hope you will make a surprise for us, thanks.

Where can I get 2.9 beta? There are no links anywhere on this site to do so. I'm looking for 2.9 beta not 2.8. It's not in the repos under xenial, so please don't suggest I just go ahead and install it.
Please, I'm a huge fan and would love to check it out. But it just doesn't seem to be available.

It's sad to see that development on Amarok has been discontinued. I loved Amarok as the most capable and feature-rich music player it has been. But it's no more. I am now using Clementine due to the stalled development. I'd appreciate if this project sees a revival in the foreseeable future and would love to use a new release based on Qt5 and KF5 then. Until this does not happen I will stay with the replacement.